225 Court Farm Road, Hyde Group

Keegans (providing quantity surveying services), ECD Architects (providing architectural design services) and PPCR (carrying out resident satisfaction surveys) worked with Hyde and Mears to find practical, cost effective and potentially replicable solutions for reducing CO2 emissions in existing housing stock via a comprehensive review and selection of the technologies available.

The new project, dubbed Retrofit & Replicate, is in line with a national shift in the housing sector’s focus from new build, as it aims to address the huge challenge of reducing CO2 emissions through the retrofitting of existing housing stock. Current government targets aim to reduce the UK’s total CO2 emissions by 60 per cent by the year 2050, however the overwhelming expert opinion in relation to housing is this target should be a more challenging 80 per cent.

The property identified is a 1930s mid-terraced home in Mottingham, South East London in need of refurbishment and currently achieving a SAP energy rating of 60, well above the UK average of 48. It will therefore be a challenging, but ultimately more constructive task, to meet the CO2 reduction target of 80
per cent.

Technology that was incorporated into the project included super-insulation to both internal and external building fabric, triple-glazed windows, insulated doors, solar thermal panels, LED lighting, water-saving devices and rainwater harvesting.

We are confident that this two-year project can make a major contribution to the development of national sustainability and energy efficiency policies.